Here's a sampling of the kinds of articles you'll receive
What Resentment Means
By Wednesday Martin
As seen in the September 2009 Issue of StepMom Magazine
In the course of researching my book Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do, I was reminded time and again that there are a handful of emotions that are just too taboo for those of us married to men with kids to admit having. Often an interview with one of my subjects would have to go on for 30 or 45 minutes before the woman speaking with me felt she could express feelings she feared I might judge her for having. More than once, I had to pave the way to disclosure by going first: "There were days I was so angry at my husband and his daughter for shutting me out that I wanted to leave." After that, the floodgates opened: women with stepkids are hungry for understanding and compassion, particularly when it comes to the Feelings That Dare Not Speak Their Names. But they are also wary: the confessions I heard were invariably prefaced with a plea for understanding, along the lines of, "You have to understand, I really am a nice person. I'm the type who helps blind people cross the street, but my stepdaughter..." or "I can make friends with a person in line at the grocery store, I swear I am that friendly. But with my stepkids..."
Jealousy is one of the biggest taboo emotions--there's nothing uglier, it seems, or more shameful to us, than embodying the cliché of the green eyed stepmonster. Unless it's being a petty, resentful stepwitch. "My stepmother resents us spending any time with our dad," one young woman, who had been a stepdaughter for more than a dozen years, told me. "When my brother and I show up, I give it two days before she starts refusing to look at us and rushing out because she's so 'busy.' "
The young woman I spoke with seemed to feel that dad's wife's resentment came out of nowhere, and was stepmom's doing--and "fault"-- alone. Indeed, many of us who have stepkids harbor the same suspicion. "I feel awful that I dread them showing up. But I do," more than one woman told me in a shamed, hushed tone. Other women confessed that they resented the kids for being a financial drain, for being allowed to determine visitation themselves rather than adhering to the schedule, or just for being the apple of their father's eye. "He's such a sap for her," one woman told me miserably. "He never draws the line, and so he's turned her into a brat. And I resent him for it, and I resent her." She looked me in the eye and said, guilty, "There. I said it. It felt good for a second. And now I hate myself."
The dynamic of experiencing a taboo emotion and then excoriating ourselves for it is a common one. But that doesn't mean it is necessary. Resentment, for example, is not what it seems, is not proof that a woman married to a man with kids is mean or unkind. In fact, it is arguably evidence of precisely the opposite: it tells us, among other things, that she is very likely being way too nice, and excessively patient
and understanding as well. Resentment is evidence that something in the system – not the stepmother – is off.
In her breakthrough research, Elizabeth Church, a Canadian stepfamily expert, social psychologist, and stepmother herself, has "translated" resentment, showing that it is more like a detour, or a sleight-of-hand in which one emotion hides another. The resentful stepmother, Church tells us, is a woman whose many efforts to reach out to her stepchildren have gone unreciprocated and have perhaps even been rebuffed. I would add that she is also likely to appear resentful when her hope to be invited to the center of the family culture has been dashed--after a weekend or decade of trying. After years of attempting to connect, of putting his kids first, a woman with stepkids who remains the stuck outsider in the stepfamily architecture cannot help but see his kids showing up as a weekend or holiday of banishment--her own. Too often, the minute they walk through the door, she goes from the cozy inside of a couple relationship to an excluded outsider, and moreover is pathologized as "petty and selfish" for having any negative feelings about it. What a set up. Most of us don't even realize it's happening--it's feelings of self-hatred, rather than an understanding that our own entire stepfamily system is sick, that hit us.
When we consider the additional fact that stepchildren (even adult stepchildren) who experience loyalty binds (the sense that liking stepmom would be a betrayal of mom) often hold their stepmothers at arms length forever, stepmother resentment reads very differently than the witchy way we've been taught to understand it. Whenever I hear a stepchild accuse a stepmother of being resentful, I am frankly astonished that he or she (if they are adults) fails to consider that this accusation implicates them as well. To put it boldly, rather than presuming this is all about stepmom, we might also ask the adult stepchild, What have you done to make your stepmother resentful? Were you a very difficult adolescent, and have you never since spoken to your stepmother about it? Do you show up with your kids, make a mess or act disrespectful of her household rules, thus setting her up to feel like a bitch if she says anything to you? Do you still attempt to "split the couple" by playing dad off stepmom in subtle or not-so-subtle ways? Or attempt to "exclude" stepmom or put her on the outside whenever you show up (for example, by talking a lot about things you with dad, or mom and dad, before stepmom came onto the scene)? Many adult stepchildren who accuse their stepmothers of being resentful actually may be unconsciously "baiting" her with these behaviors, behaviors their father has refused to bring up with them for years, likely figuring that "my wife can just deal with it--they're hardly ever here and when they are, I don't want to argue with them." What woman wouldn't chafe against such a dynamic?
A woman with stepkids who feels resentful, Church and other experts who truly understand stepmother reality tell us, needs to dial back her efforts with his children. Rather than giving them the opportunity to elicit the feeling, "I do and I do for them," she might try doing less, and stepping out more when they are around. This will take away their chance to rebuff her, and give them the alone time with dad they crave. The resentful (that is, excluded and rebuffed) woman with stepkids might also find relief by bringing up the topic of being the stuck outsider in the stepfamily architecture with her husband or partner. Hearing that the phenomenon is so common that it has a name--rather than just being one of his wife's quirky "problems"--will likely come as a relief to him, and may spur him to action. Just as ”resentment" indicates much different issues, a stepmonster is not what she seems. It takes an entire family to create her.
Advice. Information. Help. Support.
Affair-Proof Your Marriage
By Jacquelyn B. Fletcher
As seen in the October 2009 issue of StepMom Magazine
It’s a second wife’s secret fear: “What if my husband went back to his ex-wife?” According to infidelity expert Dave Carder, women have reason to be concerned. “There is already a shared history there that is very volatile and can easily be stimulated and made alive and burst from old, cold embers into a full flaming relationship,” Carder says.
Most stepfamily experts, including myself, talk a lot about how important it is for a new stepfamily to set up boundaries with the exes, especially at the beginning. The reason for this is because remarried couples are in danger. More remarriages end in divorce than first marriages and so it is critical that a new couple in a stepfamily works on building their bond. Creating boundaries around what is appropriate behavior between the exes is part of this process.
“Stay away from ex wives and ex husbands except for any kind of electronic transfer that you need to do,” Carder advises. “Keep up good boundaries. Don’t get involved in their personal lives. Don’t try to counsel them. Just stay appropriate in your relationship with them—the business transactions that are necessary—and you’ll be fine. If you get involved in personal stuff with them you are treading on dangerous ground.”
In a first marriage, a couple typically has several years to work on becoming a team before a baby comes along to test their bond. When there are children from previous relationships involved in your remarriage, you get no such time to feel confident in your relationship with your mate before you’re launched into the thick of things. Your bond is immediately tested, before you’ve had a chance to define what it is. So it’s crucial that a couple in a stepfamily consciously decides to make time for each other no matter how long you’ve been married. Test out these tips to affair-proof your marriage:
Create an “ex” plan.
Decide how you will deal with the exes in your lives together. Make sure you both feel comfortable with how communication, negotiation, and child transfers will happen. Peggy Vaughan, the founder of the Extramarital Affairs Resource Center, agrees and suggests that stepmoms be active partners with their spouses. “Having children from the earlier marriage automatically means he will have a life-long relationship of some sort with his ex-wife. While that can be a difficult fact to swallow, it is a fact. So the challenge is not how to avoid the contact, but how to manage it. This means avoiding a situation where he ‘lives in two worlds,’ functioning as a
father to his children from the earlier marriage completely on his own (as aseparate world) from the one with you.”
Stay connected.
Every morning and evening check in with each other. Have coffeetogether on the front porch. Walk the dog around the block.
Plan things to look forward to.
Plan a trip for your one-year anniversary. Plan big trips for your fifth, tenth, and twentieth anniversaries.
Have an affair with your spouse.
“Over 90 percent of people who are having affairs are having sex in the car,” says Carder. “When was the last time you drove to your favorite spot, took a bottle of wine, looked at the sunset, made out like crazy, and drove home two hours later?”
Learn something new together.
Go to a class. Make or build something.
Find things you love to do together and do them.
Invest in your emotional bank account by doing fun things you both enjoy. Go to the movies. Cook gourmet meals. Hike in the mountains. Go to a football game. Get involved in a charity you’re both passionate about.
Remember the things that attracted you to each other in the first place.
“My husband’s an amazing guy,” says Georgianne, a stepmom of four children. “He is my soul mate. I knew when I met him. I had one of those cosmic flash-card moments, which is not to say we don’t have issues. But we’re so much on the same page about so many things.”
The challenge of any marriage is to figure out how to work and live in a partnership. But the only way to achieve a working stepfamily is if both you and your husband work together as a unified team. It’s a process of trial and error, but one that must stand on the assumption that both of you are committed to supporting each other.
Why are you with that man? Why is he with you? I’d be willing to bet it’s pretty simple. Love and hope. And love and hope are things that can sustain you if you decide to open your hearts to each other, consciously, each and every day.